Archive for ‘September, 2013’

If you are desperate to kill fruit flies, and Lord knows I am, then the best way is to get a little dish, pour in some apple cider vinegar, and stir in a drop or two of dishwasher soap.

The soap changes the surface tension of the vinegar. The flies come in to drink the vinegar, they drown, and I cheer. Little bastards can’t help themselves. They pile on and die in great and glorious numbers.

Rocksalt’s been rolling pretty good lately, we made our Kickstarter and sold a few ads. The new issue is out there on the stands, has been for a while, will stay for a while. That’s what happens when you’re really lazy about distribution, it takes a couple months to get them all out there.

I’m not going to lie to you, it feels really good to have a fully functioning magazine. It’s great fun. All the other magazines are going out of business and we keep trucking because we’re actually giving people what they actually want. Comics. For some reason that’s too hard for everyone else.

Having been raised in Kentucky, there are certain biases that just seem completely insane to me. I cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone would hate anyone else for being Jewish or Catholic. Those specifically just lose me completely.

I remember watching Sinead O’Connor live on SNL tearing up the picture of the pope and thinking “What is she talking about?” And then her career instantly died and I was totally lost. I had no idea there were enough Catholics in the world to constitute an offendable minority. To me Catholicism and Judaism were just two more flavors on the endless religious smorgasbord that was central Kentucky in the 1990s. We had Mormons, Lutherans, snake handlers, Baptists, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seven Day Adventists, nondenominationals (old style), nondenominationals (new style, the ones that would grow to become the current Religious Right but at the time were just slightly odd), Episcopalians, Unitarians (normal), Unitarians (crazy), Catholics, Baha’i, and a synagogue. They were all more or less the same. I wasn’t aware that any one of them had more or less significance than the others.

So I have an interesting story to tell you. I don’t know if you’re friends with me on Facebook or not, but last week I made the terrible error of telling 9/11 “truthers” that I thought they were wasting their time. Their time, and everybody’s time. My point was more or less that there is so much to worry about on 9/10 and 9/12 and every day since then, and we can’t get to it because they’re trapped in something that is, to be blunt, the stupidest controversy ever. Airplanes hit the buildings, they fell down. They fell down because they were built like crap. WTC 7 too. I’ve had the conversation a million times, and I’m done with it. I’m tired of even explaining why I’m tired of explaining. I’m tired of being lectured by stoners on the melting points of steel and their theories about how jet fuel burns.

Controlled demolition, if you don’t already believe in it, sounds unimaginably stupid. Maybe it’s so stupid that it’s smart and one day we’ll see that it’s all true, like learning the earth really does go around the sun. But until then, it JUST SOUNDS DUMB. If you are serious about the truth about 9/11, wise up and pick another point to start, because that one is plain burnt down.

A truther that I know in Turkey just went apeshit bananas over this controversial point of view, summoned all his manchild friends, and proceeded to blow up my Facebook page for a solid day. The 9/11 thread went to a thousand comments, 90% of them memes from the old Spider-Man cartoon from the 70s with the word “fag” on them somewhere.

Surveying this, I felt desolation. I have come to the end of the internet. I have seen all the funny pictures. There are no new memes, no new jokes, no combination of pixels left to thrill me with its novelty. These people consider themselves 4chan intelligentsia with a direct line to The Secret Truth Behind The 21st Century, and all they have is Spider-Man. Not even new Spider-Man, forty-year-old Spider-Man.

So I ignored them and let the fools have their day, and as a result my Klout score went through the roof, and I got the first useful Klout perk I’ve ever gotten. No more cans of Axe Body Spray for me, buddy! Nope, I got two free tickets to go see the new movie “Gravity.”

This is extremely exciting. “Gravity” is one of the rare movies to come along in this decade that I actually wanted to see. I don’t know what it is, but something in me wants to see spaceships explode. That’s why I’m watching “Legend of the Galactic Heroes,” and that’s why I wanted to see “Gravity.”

(I’m putting “Gravity” in quotes in this post because the word gravity is my father’s favorite word, and I want to separate the film from his hilarious digressions on the topic.)

So I invited one of the people who helped me make the 9/11 thread the shitstorm that it was, my friend Beau (I really invited my wife, but she had zero interest in going, so, Beau). I was surprisingly at sea as to whom to invite, because I NEVER go see movies any more and I don’t really know anyone else who does besides Beau and his crew. While sitting in the theater I realized that I hadn’t been to see a movie in its proper habitat for three or four years — I think Up was the last.

So, after that fascinating digression, we agreed to meet tonight to see the movie.

Last night my dog Leap ran away. I went for a walk with my daughter, my roommate let her out after I’d been gone five minutes, and now she hasn’t come back and it’s been 24 hours. The theory is that either she tried to follow me on the walk and got lost or she tried to bust rough with the raccoons in the back yard, fell in the creek, and got lost. Either way, she hasn’t come home. We’re worried sick. Well, I’m worried sick and Gewel is worried sick. Amelia’s only six months old, so she just wonders. Her friend was there, now she isn’t, and she wonders why. Rocky enjoys the vacation, because he’s an old dog, but he’s starting to miss her something awful. Most of today was spent looking for her, making fliers, walking around, asking people, checking the animal shelter, checking Craigslist, doing everything, finding nothing. Nobody even saw her. She walked out the door and vanished in the night.

But I’m not going to let that stop me from watching the movie, so I went. Met Beau, got the tickets, settled in for the show. It was in 3D.

I feel compelled to review it here, because Klout went through all the trouble to give me the tickets as I am a noted “influencer” and “baiter of fools,” and I want to encourage that behavior. So here ya go, Klout! Thank you for the tickets, and I hope you enjoy my review.

“Gravity.”

Everybody, you should go see this movie. Go. Don’t wait for it to come to you, because this movie will not amount to much on a small screen. This is spectacle. It needs 3d glasses, giant subwoofers, and a crowd of people watching it with you. Let me tell you more.

It was great. It was not that great. It was exactly what I needed. It began and ended with spaceships exploding, and also the middle was that too. It was hard science fiction, for the first time ever in my life — zero-g looked weightless, space was silent, the earth below was magnificent and stunning.

The story was so simple as to not be there. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock play literally the only two people in the world. They are in space, a meteor shower destroys their spaceship, they have to figure out how to get back to Earth, it’s not easy. Everything goes wrong with the predictable, thudding monotony of a Hollywood script, and when Bullock finally crash-lands in Africa the only cliche left unturned was a rousing chorus of Hakuna Matata. It is Man vs. Nature via Save The Cat. It was the heroic journey with every single beat replaced by space peril special effects. It was a collection of scintillating cliches in 3d. I did not care.

I was swept away, dizzied by the speed, the terror, the vertigo. This is the first film I know of to truly capture what it must be like to be in danger of your life in low earth orbit, and it was all in 3d.

There were moments of dialogue that were truly risible. Their attempt to make this some sort of emotional epic about a mother coming to terms with the death of her child was unnecessary, wasted, and more or less feeble. I just ignored those scenes and concentrated on the glorious shots of fire in outer space, the problems of piloting a Soyuz through an exploding space station, the terror of being untethered and spinning wildly as you fall into the void. Sitting here, right now, I can tell you that the scene with them hanging on to the parachute cord by dear life was silly. In the moment, I was in the moment.

Hollywood has managed to make a film that there is no point in pirating. On the thin little box of your computer this movie will be laughable, the lambent visuals overwhelmed by the rote acting, the exhilaration of survival undercut by the chore of having to see Sandra Bullock undressing again (and I understand that is the reason this movie got made, I’m not naive). In the theater, in 3d, with the entire room shaking with subliminal bass as the space station falls into the atmosphere and is torn to shreds while bursting into flames, the endless vistas of space behind every window, it is magic. You feel like you are in space. You feel like you can’t breathe, like you are in deadly danger; in fact, maybe the only thing that saves the movie from being too intense is that you are certain, Hollywood certain, that Sandra Bullock is not going to die. And you cling to that tether, because if it is not true then the universe is just too cruel.

It was more than the sum of its dumb. It was entrancing, frightening, intriguing, and spectacular. It was exactly the sort of spectacle that Hollywood should give us. While I was watching it time did not exist.

I walked out of the movie and realized that I hadn’t thought about my missing dog for two hours. And that, my friends, is the magic of Hollywood.

Some people train their body, some people train their minds. Some people play Civilization 4 all night. Those are my options, at least.

I’m watching these weird videos about a guy who used to be a super famous body builder on Venice Beach back in the 80s, with Ahnold and Hulk Hogan and all those guys, but now it’s 2013 and he’s still there, living on the beach now. I remember meeting him once or twice back in 1999, but he’s still there. He’s an old homeless guy with missing front teeth and weird, detumescent looking arms. Most of those guys are gone. A couple are still famous. But there’s this one guy, Bill Pettis, who’s still exactly there, vibrating between both states.

This last week has been a great week for America. I honestly cannot remember the last time I was this proud to be an American. I’ve felt a lot of hope sometimes, especially the weeks that Obama and Clinton were elected. But I’ve rarely felt that hope was delivered upon. In the last week we have begun to see, for the first time that I know of, the sort of America that I want to see.

I’ve always longed for a nation that could take its place among the nations of the world. I reject jingoism and American exceptionalism; I don’t want to be better just because we think we’re better. I want to be one of them, part of the world and its political struggles, and I want a position of leadership because we earned it, not because we bullied our way to it. That’s why events with the UN have so bitterly disappointed me since the Bush years. I think the UN is the rightful government of the world, and I think the United States should earn, and keep, a place of real leadership among that body.

So this week has been great for me. For the first time America has developed a series of Democratic politicians who know how to play the game. We actually have people who might be good enough to survive in Parliament now. This procedural footsie that we’ve been playing with the Republicans for the last ten years has forced Democrats to wise up a bit. Now the great hidden trap door of the two-party system — the mechanism by which fanatics hijack their own primaries and doom their electoral chances — is yawning beneath their feet and there’s a breed of good, strong Democrats ready to take the reins.

I don’t endorse them all, I just see them as a step in the right direction. The situation reminds me of Wendy Davis, who is awesome on women’s rights and awesome on filibustering and terrible, absolutely terrible and dire on fracking. She is totally pro-fracking, it’s a centerpiece of her campaign, I bet if you google it she’s making a lot of money from fracking lobbyists. If it wasn’t for the fact that her opposition, Greg Abbott, is exactly as bad as her on this issue plus infinitely worse on infinitely others, I would have some problems backing Davis for governor of Texas.

But it is as it is, so I don’t. She’ll do. I’ll mention my objections, pin my hopes to a change of heart, and plan to replace her quickly or work around her on the law, if we the people could find a way. I’ll do that because it seems to me that politics is about working with what is and not what should be. There is no candidate in Texas with a reasonable chance to win the governorship from Abbott besides Davis, and she’s good enough on some things, so fine. Let’s go.

Obama is, to me, one of the best of these. I enjoy his work tremendously. I’m a big fan. I don’t expect much from the President except to give speeches and act cool, and that’s what he’s doing. This Syria thing has been an absolute tour-de-force. It sort of makes me sad that so many people are missing it, because it’s been cool.

Obama opens by saying he wants to attack Syria. Fair enough. Syria really has some shit coming for the way they’ve been acting for the last couple years, and this chemical weapons thing is just too far. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it — Assad’s running the country badly enough that it happened, and as it happens he’s a murdering monster and I have no problem with dragging him in front of the Hague.

But we don’t really want to invade. We just want to talk about it. We want to get the world’s attention and say, hey, time to do something about Syria. Like it or not, a good strong saber-rattle from the President got the world talking about something important. It’s why we’re talking about it now. I’ve been following the Syrian civil war for a couple years, and never before have I had the impression that the world was interested.

So he got your attention. I know he scared you, because an American President talking about intervening in the Middle East is always scary. But you have to admit that there’s no way we’d be having this conversation if he hadn’t.

Suddenly all eyes are on Syria. Suddenly China and Russia are on the spot for blocking UN intervention. Putin’s in it for the long haul. Syria is a key ally, they have a major naval base there, if you want Russia to be a world player you want to hold on to Syria and Putin’s never really been too worried about what his puppets have to do to stay in control.

China is in a trickier position. There’s nothing in it to block Syrian intervention than a matter of principle, keeping America and other countries from intervening in things that they perceive to be “massive human rights violations” but might just be understandable little Tiananmen-type massacres, they really don’t want the world just getting involved in those willy-nilly. But Assad really is pretty awful, so in the cold light of day they’re not really willing to do much for him.

Then comes the best part — Obama gives the speech saying that he wants to intervene in Syria, he’s even picked what buildings to blow up, but it’s important that Congress approve it because he can’t act without Congressional approval. This is so perfectly obvious to be mind-blowing genius. It’s the first time that the President has asked Congress for approval of a military action, which the Constitution very clearly states that he must do, this is the first time this has happened IN MY LIFETIME. Suddenly this essential check on the power of the Presidency is restored.

And what a Congress to give it to! Fractured into four squabbling factions, unable to do anything but fitfully repeal and reconfirm Obamacare, bedeviled by the most nakedly greedy and ignorant political faction in my memory. This decision is the perfect rock on which to break the Tea Party. They are trapped, because they love war, they hate Obama, they love acting in concert with each other, and they hate making difficult and nuanced decisions. Faced with the one thing they love above all other things, a war, dangled in front of them by the one thing they cannot stand, Obama, they cannot survive. The guys who run them, the guys with the money, they want the war. But the fanatics that have their ear cannot do anything if Obama tells them to. If Obama installs a door that says “Push” then they have to pull. Team Obama’s been making a sport, in the last couple years, of dangling red meat in front of the Republicans because they know they are too divided to take it. Obama’s offered them extraordinary concessions and they can’t get it together enough to say “yes, we’ll take it.” This is the greatest expression of this strategy yet. THEY WANT THIS WAR. They can’t take it.

Witness McCain, who Obama has finally brought in close enough to kill. This will spell the end of McCain. He’s a hawk, he’s in the pocket of the defense industry, he wants to invade Syria for all the wrong reasons. He can’t resist this. He’s finally willing to work with Obama on something.

But he miscalculated, and Obama did not. McCain thought that his conservative credentials were good enough. After all, he ran against Obama. He brought the Tea Party their beloved Palin. If you think there would be anybody in the entire world who was proof against charges of collusion with the Big B. O. then it would be he.

He overestimated the base’s love for him. Obama did not underestimate their hatred. The Tea Party hates Obama so much that, if he’s for war, they’re against it. He actually found the exact dictator that they pretended Saddam was — he’s offering them their beloved war in Iraq again, this time for all the right reasons. There’s even the dreaded bogeyman of Russia to defeat, to make them feel like strong Cold Warriors again.

Nope. They can’t take it. If Obama’s for War, they’re suddenly pacifists.

The mawkish spectacle of these chickenhawks turning turtledove was worth the price of admission alone, but there’s so much more.

Saying that America will attack Syria…as soon as both houses of Congress agree that it’s okay. That’s like saying never. That’s not exactly a tight deadline. The only way they could ever get together on anything is….if Putin managed to piss them off so badly that they unite against him.

Putin is isolated, determined to stop America on general principle and protect his ally on general principle, but even he can see the way things are going. If he has to choose between Assad and Putin, then it’s Putin. It’s Putin a million times. Assad can be replaced. Assad isn’t doing a good job. He’s getting him in trouble. Maybe he should be replaced.

Since Rouhani has been elected President of Iran we’ve been making cautious diplomatic overtures, and it is bearing fruit. The mullahs who run Iran want to support Assad to the end; they’re the best ally he’s got left. Rouhani and the people of Iran, not so much. Any way you look at it, a hundred thousand people have died in Syria in the last two years, all because Assad refused to step down. It’s not making him popular, as I understand it. This situation is gently peeling Rouhani and the moderates away from the mullahs — and it’s working!

Meanwhile, Europe and the UN get to rein in the hot-headed Americans. Yes, yes, something must be done. But let the weapons inspectors do their work first. What’s the rush, unless you’re Syrian.

So now Obama’s establishing a strong, dynamic, but reasonable and deliberative nation that is equally determined to solve humanitarian crises and to play by the rules. All this and an alliance with France. I’m a happy man.

The Three Gorges Dam impounds 39.3 cubic kilometers of water. Although the top of the dam is 185m above sea level, according to wiki the dam itself is 181m tall! That means the bottom of the dam is only 13 feet above sea level! I know that sounds crazy, but look at this:

But it won’t blow up the world. It would be a lot worse if you measured from the top of the dam, and I don’t remember enough calculus to work out with the constantly dropping level of the surge and the speed of the water carrying it across the delta…. the whole dam would probably drain before it reached the ocean. But, basically, the important thing is that China can only accidentally destroy their own country, they will not destroy the world.

Grandmother and Amelia, sitting on the back patio waiting for the moon to rise.

The High Bridge at night. I got really lost in Kentucky trying to drive to Kroger’s and ended up here, at the highest cantilevered bridge over a navigable stream IN THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES. It was built by the same guy who built the Brooklyn Bridge, but he did a better job, because he didn’t die working on this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bridge_of_Kentucky

Kafka and crow communicate.

This painting is only interesting because it is an inferior reimagining of a painting at the Ringling Museum. As you can see, the perspective is really off in a bunch of places.

This painting was sort of amazing. The guy painted exactly the parts that you saw here and left the rest completely undone. It’s a picture of “The Expulsion of Hagar,” a rather depressing scene in the Bible, and my theory is that it reminded this artist of his childhood.